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SERMON 



PREACHED IS 



HOLLIS-STREET MEETING-HOUSE, 



ON SUNDAY, OCT. 31, 1852. 



BY THOMAS STARR KING, 



PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 



Sfcon!) Ha it ion. 



BOSTON: 

BENJAIVIIN H. GREENE, 124, WASHINGTON STREET. 

CHARLESTOWN : M^ KIM & CUTTER, 

62, Main Stbeet. 

1852. 






BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 

No. 22, School Street. 






SERMON. 



DiNrEL vi. 3 ; — " Then this daniel was preferred above the presidents 

AND PRINCES, BECAUSE AN EXCELLENT SPIRIT WAS IN HIM; AND THE KING 
THOUGHT TO SET HDI OVER THE WHOLE REALM." 



There is but one subject that can engage our thoughts in 
the church to-day. A great sorrow pervades the air. The 
solemn sense of irreparable loss weighs down the spirits of 
the American people. Out from the heart of the land has 
burst a grief, of which the official symbols — the dreary 
tones of the cannon, the mourning drapery, the lowered 
flags, the public resolutions — are, for once, the honest and 
feeble signs. The whole feeling of the nation, like a con- 
scious weeping willow, arches its vast respect, and droops 
its sensitive foliage over one new-made grave. 

The words I have selected from the Old Testament are 
perfectly applicable as an expression of the greatness which 
has recently been stricken from the living forces of our 
country. He was preferred above all presidents and princes. 
The highest office would have been nothing but the proper 
pedestal, to set the proportions of his greatness in their 
appropriate position and relief. The largest honors would 
have been only the natural drapery of his broad shoulders. 
If all the great men of this generation could have been 
collected from all nations, it is probable that no one would 



have been found to deserve the pre-eminent place for mas- 
siveness and majesty of mind, and to stand forth, by 
honorable election, as " the foremost man of all this world," 
so much as he whose mortal life has recently been quenched. 
But, however this may be, it cannot be questioned that 
the crown of our national genius has been snatched away 
by death. By common consent of the most eminent in 
om- land, — the orators, the lawyers, the statesmen, — he 
was their leader, whose supremacy they cheerfully allowed. 
His brow was, for more than a generation, a prominent 
part of our natural scenery. His was the great granite face, 
like that on the Franconia Mountain in New Hampshire, 
standing out from the solid ridges of our New England 
intellect and character, and overlooking the land. Him 
and the great cataract of the lakes, we boasted of to other 
states as the chief glories of our country. It would have 
been grand, if, in the fulness of his vigor, and before any 
controversies of his political honor arose, he could have 
stood ia the most eminent place of our country, — the mag- 
nificent entablature, dignifying and completing the various 
columns of its genius. He did not have this proper setting 
for his powers ; but he did stand highest by his native sub- 
limity. In the regard of those whose opinion is lasting 
fame, in the respect of foreign eyes, he stood, as he will 
stand in history, preferred, for mental greatness, above all 
the presidents and princes that were more distinguished by 
office. 

" Pygmies are pygmies still, though perched on Alps; 
And pyramids are pyramids in vales." 

How can it be otherwise than that the sudden disap- 
pearance of this colossal greatness from the moral land- 
scape of the world should shock all hearts with emotions 
that affect the lowest strata of our sensibility! If the 
tidings had been borne to us that some of the permanent 



wonders of nature had been obliterated, that an earthquake 
had shaken down the great range of the Himalayas, or in- 
gulfed the majesty of Mont Blanc in its black bosom, or 
had levelled the rock over which Niagara has roared for 
ages, our minds could not have been so startled with a 
feeling of the mysterious power that envelopes us, as now 
that we learn — 

" This mighty spirit is eclipsed ; this power 
Hath passed from day to darkness ; to whose hour 
Of light no likeness is bequeathed, no name, — 
Focus at once of all the rays of fame ! " 

What visitation of Providence can thrill the citizens of our 
country, especially of New England, with more solemn 
thoughts than to know that the majestic presence — " how 
noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and 
moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an 
angel! in apprehension how like a god!" — is never more 
to be seen of men ; that the greatest nature our land has 
reared since Washington was born is never more to guide 
our councils and ennoble our Capitol ; that the book of his 
activity is sealed ; and that he is now to be a treasure of 
memory, a silent grandeur, in the quiet halls of history, — 
a force and an ornament belonging to the past ? 

This is not the place, of course, for any eulogy, or even 
an analysis of the powers, of the departed statesman. 
That which would be extravagance if said of most great 
men is the simple statement of his intellectual power. And 
yet, in speaking of his genius, we should be careful not to 
weaken our eulogium by doing injustice to the breadth of 
the field of genius. There are kinds of greatness of which 
his mental constitution did not largely partake. To the 
rank of explorers and discoverers, — men who anticipate 
history and hasten destiny, and who stand far ahead of 
the vanguard of humanity, holding up the flame of a new 
truth, which their intellectual fire had kindled, that flashes 



light into the unexplored pathway of the future, — he did 
not belong. He was made to be an institutionalist, rather 
than a prophet. His mission was to comprehend, purify, 
conserve, and strengthen the good structures which society 
has already gained, to widen and confirm their possible 
blessings for the race, rather than to meditate a new order, 
even though it might be a higher one, which could be 
reached only by disruption of established ties, and through 
the turmoil of revolution. The natural attitude of his 
mind was reverence for the beneficent truth and institutions 
which the past bequeathed. He was the profound inter- 
preter of the practical wisdom embodied in political sys- 
tems, and the potent defender of it against the misappre- 
hension of ignorance, the perversion of party interests, and 
the hand of heedless innovation. He estimated the positive 
social good which rooted institutions disburse, even though 
many evils were incidental to them, of really more account 
than the ghastly theories of perfect good, which beckon 
away so many flighty and adventurous intellects from the 
solid road of slow and steady progress. 

He had the combination of powers, temper, and disci- 
pline, that make a safe and successful administrative states- 
man ; and his intellect was just the ally which our system 
of government most needed, at the time when he entered 
public life, to set forth its wisdom, to unfold the beautiful 
symmetry of its structure and powers, and to hold it up to 
the admiration and gratitude of the country, that the affec- 
tions of the people might fasten upon it, like the tendrils of 
the ivy upon the solid castle-wall. 

The whole structure of our Constitution ; the grandeur 
and marvel of its combinations, as relieved against the 
miserable patchwork of the old confederation ; its originality 
among the political edifices of history; the skill with which 
its forces are balanced, and the ease of their working, — 
were comprehended in his intellect as the mind of a me- 



chanic comprehend:^ the idea of a machine which his genius 
has invented. He was the epic poet of the Convention of 
1787. His sympathies were less with the Revolution than 
with the builders and the erection of our present national 
polity. Our whole governmental America ; the bands that 
connect the State forces with the vivifying power of the 
central administration ; the complex harmony of judiciary 
and executive, military and legislative powers; the liga- 
ments that could sustain the greatest strain, and the delicate 
tendons where it needed the most tender handling and the 
most permanent safeguards ; the safe vents supplied in it 
for popular passion, and the cylinders that must constantly 
condense the force of unrelenting law, — all played in his 
brain as a vital and complicated conception, whose magni- 
ficence he revered, and whose beauty was the constant 
inspiration of his heart. The work of the great Convention 
that framed our government seems nobler as reflected in his 
capacious understanding, and as its ideal rods and beams 
and valves worked without friction in the bright medium of 
his imagination, than it probably seemed to the hot intel- 
lects of those who had just completed their task, and left it 
outlined on immortal parchment. 

The idea of the Union, which to many minds is an 
abstraction, and too often is the customary expletive of a 
demagogue's vile morality and feeble thought, was with 
him the vivid and adequate symbol of the greatness and 
the privileges, the power and the peace, of the republic. It 
seemed as though his eye always took in the moral and 
civil scenery of the country, — its thousands of happy 
homes, its schools and churches, its factories and workshops, 
the vast fleets of its commerce, and the widening line of 
civilization, before which the wilderness was falling ; and 
then, when he spoke, made the word Union embody all the 
gladness and grandeur which so much prosperity and plen- 
ty, so much order and happiness, awakened in his breast. 



8 



For this reason it was, we must believe, that he called on 
his countrymen to cherish the sentiments that should make 
that word sacred. For this reason he used continually 
the awful imagery of the breaking up of constellations, and 
of anarchy in the firmament, to state the terrors and the 
woes that would attend an explosion of the forces that bind 
our States together. His intellect appreciated the wisdom 
of their combination, and felt, too, the delicacy of their 
poise. Not that he was indifferent to the evils which are 
covered and partially maintained by our great national 
bond ; but he would not look at the evils exclusively or mi- 
nutely. He saw an immense overbalance of good, — bene- 
fits more various, more substantial, and more precious, than 
any polity on earth had ever secured to men. These the 
word Union represented ; these, to his mind, the blotting of 
that word annihilated, and in their place introduced discord, 
contention, and bloody strife. 

Add to this, that the great future of America (if explo- 
sive passions could only be kept down) charmed his imagi- 
nation. He comprehended what the country would be, 
centuries hence. In swelling speech he bade future genera- 
tions hail ; and there were times when he seemed to see the 
upturned faces of the Saxon millions yet to come, beseech- 
ing him, by their looks and by their prayers, to pledge all 
the resources of his intellect and his influence to preserve 
the unity and peace of a nation, upon M^hich their fortunes 
and their happiness were cast. It may be a sign of the 
secondary grade of his genius, that the idea of right, in its 
abstract holiness and majesty, did not burn constantly 
before him. But no abstract principle or sentiment with- 
drew him from a careful measure of the good which an 
actual system would secure to men in the long run. He 
was not led away by any enthusiasm for liberty as an un- 
bodied idea, but rejoiced in the liberties which the Consti- 
tution steadily secured to a continent; and, no doubt, felt 



9 



that the law of right commanded him to defend and per- 
petuate that charter, in the hope that the evils it sheltered 
would die out in time, while its good would widen and be 
everlasting. 

The prophetic men, who stand above all systems in 
immediate communion with eternal truth and justice, com- 
mand the deepest gratitude and worship of after-times. 
But God has a use for these Herculean heroes of society. 
And among the crowds of legislators who have no larger 
vision than sectional and partisan passions disclose, and the 
swarms of politicians that act only with reference to self, 
let us gratefully confess the eminence of this man, on whose 
brain were stamped the features of an empii-e, whose ima- 
gination personified a government, and who felt that he 
spoke and voted for the interests of millions and the hopes 
of posterity. 

Mr. Webster was a statesman. His greatness did not 
consist in a capacity of concentrating and leading the pas- 
sions of large bodies of people. Clay and Chatham were 
eminent for this power. But he was a philosophical states- 
man. He had a clear and vigorous comprehension of truth 
in the domain of public affairs. When he succeeded, it 
was by the force of his statement in the senate or the cabi- 
net ; and his power over the people resulted from the ma- 
jesty with which he robed the truth, by his argument and 
utterance, and by the dominion which he made it exercise 
over theur reason and heart. His ample mind was a spi- 
ritual state-house or capitol, rich with the annals of consti- 
tutional history, filled with the stately lore of national and 
civil law, studded with apartments that were crowded with 
records of diplomatic wisdom, freighted with the principles 
and statistics of public economy. His eye was constructed 
to see the truth and proprieties of national relations. He 
knew the coasts, the shoals, and the soundings of the ocean 
of national experience ; and his arm had the vigor to grasp 

2 



10 



and guide the helm of a state. His eloquence, too, had the 
serious and self-assured strength that made it competent 
to the utterance of a nation's thought and purpose. It was 
fit in language and manner for a congress of kings. Even 
in his simplest passages, the power of a great personality 
was manifest. His common sense was ponderous and 
sublime, by the momentum which his arm gave it, and the 
dignity which his diction imparted to it. Within the limits 
of his genius, his powers were unsounded. No triumph 
that he ever won seemed to require the whole of his re- 
sources, or to drain the hiding-places of his strength. The 
movement of his mind was like the sluggish might of the 
sea. His genius has thrown up into literature the most 
brilliant spray of rhetoric and imagination ; but its natural 
manifestation was the majestic ground-swell of a resistless, 
undeveloped, unfathomable power. 

Other elements and indications of his wonderful great- 
ness would arrest our notice in any thing like a full treat- 
ment of the theme, — the truthfulness of nature and sin- 
cerity of spirit which hindered even his reason from being a 
powerful advocate in a bad cause ; the dignity of his speech 
and bearing in all public scenes, and the strenuous influ- 
ence of his example against the vulgar degradations of con- 
gressional debate; the strong moral and religious reverence 
that pervaded his public words ; the fast fidelity to his 
friends ; and the tenderness which made the majesty of his 
presence sweet and cheering in his home. But we cannot 
critically measm'e the outline and bulk of his nature, stand- 
ing so near his new-made grave. In what I have thus far 
said, I have kept you too long from the grateful and practi- 
cal religious lessons that are unveiled by such a life and 
such a death. 

The great Teacher has said, " He that is greatest among 
you, let him be your servant." We are called on now 
devoutly to recognize the beneficent ordering of Providence, 



11 



that makes all true wisdom and greatness generous, and 
compels it to be a public advantage. Selfishness is in the 
heart of the world ; but the best portion of the power of 
pre-eminent genius is saved, by a law of Providence, from 
the control of selfishness, even if that temper is in the 
heart of the possessor. The thoughts of a large reason, the 
creations of a rich imagination, the heroic activity of a 
great patriotism, are for the people, for mankind, for all 
time. What gratitude is due from us to Heaven that it is 
so! A mind like Bacon's burns with the passion for ti'uth, 
and braces up its brain to the strenuous search and careful 
demonstration of new principles that rule the domain of 
science. But he cannot keep those principles for his exclu- 
sive use. He cannot put a price upon them, and say, " I 
wnh sell them only to the rich, only to feed my purse and 
my pride." The moment he proves and utters them in his 
intellectual joy, the air bears them on its •wHngs, and makes 
them universal. It turns out that the toils and victories of 
that intellect in its library were for the benefit of humbler 
men, for the advancement of knowledge and the improve- 
ment of civilization. In his desire to satisfy the thirst of 
his own intellect. Bacon harnessed himself to the whole 
fabric of society, and strained his sinews to start the world 
on the path of progress. The greatest of alJ, he was the 
servant of all. 

So, too, Shakespeare cannot patent his creations, and 
say, " Those only shall enjoy the fruits of my genius who 
will pay my price for the great luxury." The all-merciful 
God will not suffer that, but admits the poor to enjoy them, 
and scatters the leaves that bear them into almost every 
home. Newton does not think of the sailor, or the interests 
of navigation, when he toils till he lifts the moon by the 
muscles of his logic and weighs it, and proves on what 
pillars of law the sky-roof is upheld ; but he is the intellec- 
tual attorney of future ages and the human race, in all 



12 



those wearisome labors to unlock the hieroglyphic cipher of 
celestial law; and the pay he gets is gratitude, and a 
name printed in star-type on the firmament. The patriot, 
when he resolves to resist oppression, and peril his life 
rather than bear the finger-weight of tyranny upon his soul, 
lifts up the heavy mesh that holds a people in its toils, in 
his struggles to free himself, and so becomes the saviour of 
a land. 

Every magnificent brain scatters light like the sun. The 
ample intellect that has just been withdrawn from us, 
illustrated, in its way, the beneficence of God. The nation 
is bereaved; the people mourn; for the nation has lost a 
great servant, the people a majestic friend. God gave him 
a glorious mind, fit to do national service ; and it is com- 
pelled to do that service. Whatever interests or desires 
might draw him towards a strictly professional or private 
life, he cannot stay there. He rises, by the natural upsoar- 
ing of his powers, to the Capitol. The whole land has 
the benefit of his private discipUne, his thought, his speech. 
Countless farms, workshops, counting-rooms, and homes, 
that have the deepest interest in peace, have the benefit of 
his insight, his knowledge of public law, and his cool, just 
temper, to save them and civifization from the detriment of 
war with our mother-land. The Greeks, struggling for 
liberty, catch the inspiration of his eloquence, which 
strengthens the public opinion of the world in their behalf. 
His fellows, that need justice, have the aid of his under- 
standing and his lips in the solemn precincts of the temple 
of law. The whole North has the advantage of his mature 
powers to silence the malice and the taunts of Southern 
envy. Public order, that has been shocked by a barbarous 
midnight murder, has the aid of his arm to tear the accom- 
plices of an assassin from the subtle technicalities that seem 
to hide them from the reach of justice, and drag them to 
their doom. And the moral sense of humanity possesses his 



13 



frame, and breaks out through his lips, to impeach the 
Czar for his crvielty to Hungary, and arraign him for trial 
at the bar of the civilized world. 

His work is a public one. With a hero's strength he 
must do the hero's labor. The ambition which he felt, the 
desire to stand eminent in the world's history that was in 
his heart, the noble emulation that stirred him, were the 
intellectual thongs and traces by which Providence kept 
him fastened to the great public burdens which it required 
his strength to draw. 

There is nothing in public life to attract the eyes and 
the heart of one that would taste the purest and constant 
pleasures of life. How much did the great statesman 
enjoy of that privacy, those relaxations, the satisfactions 
of those agricultural pursuits, the affections and repose of 
home, which most attracted his heart ? How slight the 
opportunities granted to him to retreat from the national 
arena, and taste the happiness of life ! 

*' He who ascends to muuntain-tops shall find 
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow ; 
He who svirpasses or subdues mankind 
Must look down on the hate of those below. 
Though high above the sun of glory glow. 
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, 
Round him are ioy rocks, and loudly blow 
Contending tempests on his naked head, 
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led." 

The tax is so severe upon political greatness that no man 
would pay it, — the world would be deprived of the benefit 
of such greatness, if the Almighty had not provided that it 
cannot escape the toils by which its service may accrue to 
the human race. On the score of pleasure, the powerful 
servant of the country, whom we mourn, would not have 
looked a moment upon all the pecuniary recompense he 
gained for his devotion to public life ; but fortunately there 
were providential motives constantly weighing down the 



14 



yearnings of the heart, and keeping him pledged to the 
service of society. 

And then think of the detractions and slanders, the open 
defamation and insult, which public character must bear 
from partisan hostility and malice. What but the order of 
God, demanding great service from great talents, could keep 
a man in public life against this terrible warning, — the 
certainty of the shower of arrows, many of them poisoned 
arrows, against which he must stand? 

** The secret enemy, whose sleepless eye 
Stands sentinel, accuser, judge, and spy; 
The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain ; 
The envious, who but breathe in other's pain; 
Behold the host ! delighting to deprave. 
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave. 
Watch every fault that daring Genius owes 
Half to the ardor which its birth bestows. 
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie. 
And pile the Pyramid of Calumny ! " 

With what fearful accuracy does this describe what the 
eminent man we deplore was compelled to endure ! The 
foulest ink has been cast at him in his latter years. And 
so much of it by reformers too, — men that stood forth as 
the patrons of virtue, humanity, and the sacred law of God I 
We all know the chief and the sad occasion for most of 
these attacks. We know how many good men were forced 
to withdraw their sympathies from the great statesman by 
his speech and course towards the close of his senatorial 
career. But is the wari'are of a pirate upon a prominent 
man's motives the natural expression of virtuous dissent ? 
Is it essential that a reformer in opposition shall be the 
assassin of character? Is it necessary that all dignity of 
temper and charity of criticism shall die out of the nature 
that holds an advance-idea, and that the cause of humanity 
must be defended in the disposition of a fiend ? We are 
gathered in a church dedicated to God; and his law is 



15 



supreme over the highest genius, as over the humblest man. 
Let us not hesitate to say, that, if at the time I allude to, 
the great man, now gone, did bow his magnificent brain 
unworthily to the Slave-power, which he had always op- 
posed, from the dictate of a personal ambition, forgetting 
the awful trusts of genius and the service it owes to 
humanity, he fell ; and his intellectual greatness only 
darkens his degradation. But who has demonstrated this 
hypothesis? Who has looked into that large heart, and 
found such black treason there ? What if he did feel all 
the trusts of senatorial ofhce and intellectual power ; if he 
felt that the preservation of his country from the imminent 
danger of disruption was the comprehensive duty of a 
statesman, and the best permanent legacy to all races in 
our borders? I prefer to believe this theory. It accords 
with the principles that always governed him. Then his 
action was conscientious and heroic ; and although it may 
fail to commend itself to the conscience and wisdom of 
many, although they find it impossible as Christians to 
obey the statute which he defended, let them remember, in 
justice to him, that he was placed in the Capitol to act, 
not from their light, but from his own. Let the passions 
of politics be silent, let the heats of hatred cool, at his 
grave. He went with religious calmness to meet Him who 
judges with blended charity and justice. And as we bow 
before the mystery of the vast Providence, let us unite in 
adoration of his ordinance, that the most gifted of his crea- 
tures shall be the servants of all. 

The allusion just made to the religious majesty and 
calmness of Mr. Webster's death, suggests the second point 
which the contemplation of his career should impress upon 
us, — the strength and support which religion derives from 
the convictions and loyalty of such an intellect. I put out 
of the question here every thing that concerns loyalty of 
life and rehgiousness of character. It is not our province 



16 



to search for and put together the proofs or the disproofs 
of that. But it cannot be denied that we have buried a 
great man, whose heart was alive with religious feeling, 
and whose mind was reverent in its recognition of religious 
truth. If proof is needed to establish the chief ideas of 
religion, — the existence of God, the supremacy of moral 
principles, and a future life, — we may turn for it with equal 
confidence to the mystic intimations of nature, or to the 
faith and the convictions which the greatest men of the 
world have cherished and expressed. The pre-eminent men 
of the world have not been atheists or doubters, but reve- 
rent believers and worshippers. Where, O atheist ! where, 
O scofi'erl will you point us to the large-limbed nature, 
the encyclopedic soul, that dignifies yom' miserable creed ? 
Some slender, cold-hearted, third-rate, or perhaps second- 
rate man, here and there in history, has babbled some skep- 
tical folly, or darkened his name by the shadow of atheistic 
thought ; but, when we look up to the first rank of genius, 
— to Socrates and Plato and Pythagoras, to Paul and 
Luther, to Bacon and Leibnitz and Newton, — we find they 
are men who bow before the infinite sanctities which their 
souls discern. 

You have heard of the great reflecting telescope, built by 
a nobleman of Great Britain, whose tube, by the aid of 
ponderous machinery, is pointed towards the night-sky. 
What if it threw doubt upon the reports which our eye- 
sight and ordinary glasses make concerning the glories of 
the sky ? What if it scattered the stars into mist, made 
Sirius nothing but a huge heap of fog, and banished all our 
associations of grandeur and glorious law that have been 
connected with the heavens ? But it confirms all the 
visions of the ordinary instruments that search the upper 
space ; and, besides that, it breaks up the misty light of the 
nebulffi into sand-heaps of suns, and reports firmaments, far 
in the depths above us, which other lenses cannot reach. 



17 



Thus the greatest souls of the race confirm the views and 
faith of ordinary minds ; reflect more of the glories of God ; 
disclose, by their more searching vision, fresh galaxies of 
mystery; and make our thoughts of the Providence that 
embraces us, and comprehends all things, more reverent and 
profound. 

What a shock it would give the world's order, if such 
minds as Mr. Webster's saw no proofs of the divine exist- 
ence, felt the strain of no law of duty, thrilled with no emo- 
tions of worship, but found the thoughts of their own 
genius sufficient company for their loneliness ; lifting their 
proud and flinty summits above the superstitions that shade 
the valleys of human nature, into a bleak, atheistic air! 
It is not so. Religion is commended with the more ear- 
nestness to men by their consciousness of its truth. There 
was a fitting commentary on the glorious eighth Psalm of 
David, when our statesman stood under the elm, at night, 
on his estate in Marshfield, and, lifting his solemn eyes 
to the light that blazed on the firmament, said, " When I 
consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon 
and stars which thou hast ordained. Lord, what is man 
that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou 
visitest him ? " That is the soul's astronomy. Oversweep- 
ing the skeptical chatter of irreverent mathematicians, there 
was an echo of the truth that sprang, ages ago, out of a 
great Hebrew heart. Jura answered to the voice of the 
Alps. 

We do not mean to say, or to hint, that a taste for the 
literature and elegance of the Scriptures is a saving grace 
of character ; but we have a right to rejoice in all the un- 
professional veneration which is offered to the sacred writ- 
ings. It is well for the world to have eminent witnesses, 
that it is not an interested and a clerical taste alone that 
bows to the sublimity of the great book. Is it not proof 
of the majesty of Job and Isaiah and Habbakuk, that they 



18 

were the chosen teachers of such a mind ; that he retreated . 
from care and sorrow into their society, and was strength- 
ened and softened by their lofty and mystic speech ? It is 
sufficient testimony to the greatness of these biblical ge- 
niuses, that the largest natures seek inspiration from them : 
it is equal proof of the loftiness of an intellect, that it rises 
into near acquaintance with these eminent souls. What if 
a great man does not always live in harmony with the 
truth he venerates ? What if the stern characters he invites 
to his library sometimes rebuke him with their prophetic 
austerity, and the ti-uths spoken from the sacred mount, to 
which he lifts adoring eyes, flash warning upon his infi- 
delity? Is not this a still more impressive revelation of 
their supremacy ? and does not the great man's reverence, 
which their occasional denunciation does not impair, point 
to their royalty over conscience, which we should hasten 
practically to confess ? 

We have a right, therefore, to" ask. Is the Bible, which 
such men as Mr. Webster and President Adams revered 
and made a constant study, a shallow book? Is the Chris- 
tian faith which such men as they adored as the supreme 
truth, and the only regenerative power of the world, a 
secondary matter ? Are the religious relations of the soul, 
which such men affirmed were of first importance, and 
which no levity of their speech, at least, ever slighted, mat- 
ters which we may safely disregard ? The answer we shall 
be forced to give these questions makes the most solemn 
truth practical, and sheds a searching ray into our hearts. 
The supreme benefaction to humanity of such an intellect 
as we have lost is the testimony it bears to the reality and 
the necessity of religion. Now that he is gone, in the 
momentary gloom of his departure, I know not but these 
words stand out the most luminous of all the great words 
he uttered, — these words so simple but sublime : " Reli- 
gion is necessary and indispensable in any great human 



19 



character. There is no living without it. Religion is the 
tie which connects man with his Creator, and holds him to 
his throne. If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats 
away, a worthless atom in the universe ; its proper attrac- 
tions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future 
nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with 
no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures de- 
scribe in such terse, but terrific language as living ' without 
God in the world.' Such a man is out of his proper being, 
out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his 
happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of 
his creation." 

It is worthy of remark in this connection, that so compre- 
hensive and reverent a student of the Scriptures as Mr. 
Webster was not the partisan of any intricate and narrow 
theological theories. The broad, plain, primary truths of 
religion were sufficient for his reverence and his conscience. 
I have heard it said that he disliked the word " Christi- 
anity," and preferred the simple phrase, " the religion of 
Jesus." The spirit of penitence, faith, and love, and a reve- 
rential gratitude for the mission of Christ as the channel of 
redeeming truth and life to the world, — these were the 
outlines of his theology ; these were the definitions of Chris- 
tian character which satisfied his mind. The report which 
a friend has made of his last hours assures the world, that 
there was nothing in his utterances of faith and hope " of 
a technical character. No expression escaped him which 
would mark him as of this or that theology, or of any church 
save the universal church of Christ." Thus his life and 
death give us an original illustration of the difference be- 
tween theology and religion. What the smallest satelHte of 
our system needs is the controlfing force of the sun, and its 
bounteous heat and light ; and the majestic Jupiter, as he 
ploughs his grand orbit, needs no more. Whatever system 
of astronomy be trae, the regal planet requires nothing 



20 



more than the cheek and the charity of the central orb, and 
the smallest asteroid receives no less. So the feeblest and 
the mightiest minds require alike the central and simple 
forces of religion, and find their strength, not in artful theo- 
logies, but in the common and generous light and influence 
from God that fall equally upon all. 

And without the solemn light of religion around it, and 
the great background of religious truth to relieve it, how 
utterly must the last hours of Mr. Webster have lost the 
majesty which was upon them ! If he had died simply a 
worn-out and disappointed man, looking with sadness at 
the blighted hopes of the earth, and lifting no thought to 
scenes beyond, how sad the last days would have seemed, 
— the wreck of a noble and weather-stained bark upon the 
rocks of death I But now, what a grandeur in the close of 
his career! The deepening feeling that he was floating 
out beyond the reckonings of earth and the outline of 
human charts ; the calm fulfilment of every duty, and the 
reining up of every faculty to obey the mastery of the will ; 
the solemn tones of prayer, laden with the riches of his 
language, and humble with penitence ; the majestic and 
tender farewell to family and friends ; and then, after the 
broken ejaculations of the psalm for the divine rod and 
staff, the silent close ! — not a wreck on the desolate coasts 
of mortality, but the fading of a noble ship into the mists 
that cm-tain the horizon, its sails all set, bearing one great 
and serene form beyond our gaze into the everlasting light I 
The spirit of such grandeur there should be in every death. 
Are we prepared thus to gather our robes about us ; thus 
to look up to Heaven for help ; thus to express our con- 
fidence in the truth of the Bible, and the divine mission of 
Christ; thus to feel the support of the rod and the staff" 
which the feeblest need, and which does not bend under 
the weight of the mightiest arm 1 

I must ask you to bear with me while I refer to one more 



21 



impressive lesson of such a life and death : I mean the 
solemn truth of immortality. "When the news of such a 
loss breaks upon society, the first feeling is that of the 
mystery of death itself. It is as though we had never 
before realized it. And then it opens anew the problem of 
eternal life. It seems as if the departure of such a spirit 
must break the monotonous silence, — must open for the 
moment some rift in the cloud, and let in a beam from 
the all-surrounding day. We ought to reflect upon this 
death in regard to that question of immortality. If such a 
faith is not a fixed habit of our mind, we ought to pause, 
and set the vastness of his powers in our thought, and 
seriously ask the question, " "What has become of them ? 
whither are they gone?" This life cannot be what it 
ought to be, — man cannot be what he ought to be, — duty 
cannot be as sacred as it should be, unless we have con- 
victions, settled as those which Christ had and which he 
would inspire, of the everlasting duration of our souls. 
And now is the time for us to think on that point. God 
calls on us to meditate. "When he removes from the earth 
such men as "Washington and Webster, his providence puts 
the question to every unsettled mind, " Do you believe that 
they are annihilated, swallowed up by the dark?" There 
is not a particle less to-day of the substance that made up 
the noble frame of Washington, than there was when he 
dignified the capital. Ages hence, the matter that clothed 
his spirit will still exist, unwasted by a grain. And does 
the mind, the virtue, the character, die, while not a hair of 
his bodily substance is suffered to slip out of the treasury 
of matter ? Of that great brow, which was laid recently in 
the sepulchre, not a particle will ever drop from the grasp 
of physical law. It may moulder, but it cannot be de- 
stroyed. And do you believe that the reason, of which it 
was the fortress, and from which it played the lightnings of 
argument and eloquence, will be less permanent ? Does 



22 



God think more of such a brain than of the understanding 
that made its arch sublime? Was that soul an ephemeral 
thing of threescore years and ten, while the body is beyond 
the possibility of destruction? It must be a darkened 
mind that can believe that, — a mind not quickened with a 
proper sense of God. Death is visibly defeated, to the eye 
of every reflective mind, when it drags into its darkness 
such a nature as that. The prey is too great. His hun- 
ger is not suffered to appease itself, even on the matter 
which the spirit inhabited ; and we know that the soul can- 
not slip into his jaws. Over the mystery of that tomb near 
which the ocean moans, we may hear the chant of nature, 
according witli that of revelation, — "O death! where is 
thy sting ? O grave ! where is thy victory ?" 

This is no mere speculative question, but the most prac- 
tical of all questions. For, if we answer the question of 
immortality aright for this man, we answer it for all men. 
If we feel that it is proved by his genius, then we lift the 
whole race, with which he was kindred, into the light and 
the responsibilities of an infinite existence. Then human 
life is not a mean thing, not a trivial thing, but a solemn 
grant, a moral trust. Then we are all living with the eye 
of God upon us, and an eternal future before us, the condi- 
tions of whose fortunes our own habits are deciding now ; 
and it behooves each of us to ask ourselves before the tomb 
that has just opened, " In what spirit am I working ? Is 
it one I am willing to carry into the light of eternity, and 
submit to the scrutiny of God ? " 

A friend said, when the news of the great death reached 
us, that it seemed to him as though such a brain should 
have had two bodies to wear out. I believe that the limits 
of its earthly frame were not the limits of its existence. I 
should believe, on evidence independent of revelation, that 
there are mysteries in the universe for such a mind to revere 
eternally ; great studies to engage its interest ; proibunder 



23 



laws than were opened here for it to grasp ; divine splendors 
to kindle deeper facvilties than were here developed. If 
there were heroic virtues which were not appreciated or 
rewarded fully in his mortal career, I believe that he is gone 
into a state where the recompense is not affected by human 
injustice. If there were great errors and violation of trusts 
committed here, I believe that he has gone into the do- 
minion of a justice that executes searching and righteous 
judgment on every soul, in view of the spirit's final welfare. 
And so, let us lift our thoughts from that grave to God 
and eternity. Let us be grateful to the Providence that 
sends great genius to us, and bids it work in our service ; 
that reveals truths to us which the mightiest minds adore 
with the humility of children ; and that intimates, through 
the death of such, the great destiny and privilege of every 
soul. In the light of that Providence and that eternity, let 
us pray that we may be faithful ; let us resolve to redeem 
our time. 








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